Posts by Heflin

21) Message boards : BOINC client : Question: Details on WU upload & clearing 'Ready to report' (Message 12274) Posted 2 Sep 2007 by Heflin Post: Generally speaking... When a WU is completed on a client, in the TASKS tab it is listed under STATUS as "Ready to report". The client contacts the project upload-server & starts to transfer the result file(s). This shows up under TRANSFER tab. As well as various actions on the MESSAGES tab (started upload, defering, etc) When the transfer is completed, the line-item on the TRANSFER tab is cleared. And 'Finished upload of...' is written to MESSAGES tab. *But on TASKS tab, the item is still be listed under status as "Ready to report" until (assumptions follow) client contacts scheduler?-server to report upload completed which shows on MESSAGES tab as "Reporting X tasks"; "Schedule RPC succeeded..." Question: Is this generally correct? Every once in a while, I'll see a WU that has completed upload, but "Ready to report" on TASK tab, Status is NEVER cleared. I'm not concerned that that line-item on TASKS tab may take a while to clear, but after many days I start to wonder. **Question: Once WU results file is uploaded, but before item cleared on TASKS tab, if client is permanently killed (uninstalled, detached, even WU aborted) does that negatively impact the WU or tracking of WUs?
22) Message boards : BOINC client : Backoffs greater than 1 day (Message 12197) Posted 22 Aug 2007 by Heflin Post: This is not a complaint, but a POSITIVE situation and question. Looks like BOINC project Predictor has reached a point where returned results need to be analyzed before more WUs are created/distributed. THAT IS GREAT! see post I try to keep my machines attached to and available for 3 projects so this isn’t a problem for me at all. QUESTION: IF this no-work time is expected to be a long time (many weeks, or a few months, or more), is there a way to increase the backoff past 1-day or KEEP it at once-per-day (until more WUs are received of course). Maybe even have the server provide a ‘check back in xxx hours’ to the client (i.e. check back in 3 days). I think something like this would help keep people/computers attached to and available (‘allow new tasks’) for a project during a WU hiatus. Details: BOINC has one (or more) backoff schemes. When a project does not have any work to send out, BOINC automatically starts to backoff queries to the project. The wiki implies an exponential increase with an upper limit of 1 day for backoff. With project Predictor, it never reaches a 1-day backoff. And it doesn’t seem to STAY at 1-day (or any high backoff) The backoff I’m seeing is 1min, 1min, 1min, 1min, 2:14, 3:40, 15:26, 04:15, 1:12:55, 2:40:53, 1min then “Fetching scheduler list”. This seems to be repeated. The backoff seems to get reset more frequently than every day when “Fetching scheduler list”/” Master file download succeeded” These constant, excess, queries/request don’t hurts me or my machines. I’m not concerned with bandwidth usage. I doubt it is a problem for the project servers.
23) Message boards : BOINC client : multi CPU/Core disabled ? (Message 12056) Posted 13 Aug 2007 by Heflin Post: I didn't find this in forums, so thought I'd document issue. I'm running BOINC 5.8.16 on Win XP Pro Ver 2002 SP2 on Intel Core2. On THAT machine, BOINC is attached to only SETI & Predictor. And was able to work on 2 WUs at once (one for each core). After another of my machines attached for the first time to a new project Superlink@Technion. It appears this disabled using multiple Cores/CPUs on the first machine. [posted at superlinkattechnion] I modified my SETI preferences (trivial change), and had the box in question UPDATE with SETI. Multi CPU/Core capability has returned after SETI updated. I've modified Superlink@Technion preferences to allow multiple CPUs also. I 'guess' that Superlink@Technion default config for mulitprocessor is 1. Seems to me the 'feature' of using the config of the latest project updated/joined is flawed in that it affects ALL other projects and clients also. It would make more sense to me if a project ONLY affected work on THAT project. And/or if there were a GENERAL OVERALL BOINC settings location that affects ALL projects equally. Sometimes there are TOO MANY ways to skin a cat!
24) Message boards : The Lounge : Who has the 'Superlinkattechnion' watch? (Message 11967) Posted 7 Aug 2007 by Heflin Post: [Update] Report of complete system crash found here. Isn't it great to answer your own question?!?! =-=-=-=-= Is superlinkattechnion dead-in-the-water? My one client that is attached to that project has not been able to reach the servers since 31July07. It is able to reach the 'reference site', but even the main page has consistently been down.
25) Message boards : BOINC client : Boinc On Vista - Projects Don't Suspend (Message 11837) Posted 28 Jul 2007 by Heflin Post: Please. Someone who is having this issue please post to the alpha list. I don't know what other questions to ask. The developers read that list. They'll be able to ask the questions and get any debugging information needed to figure this out. I posted a message on the alpha list. Suggested someone knowledgable there post in this thread. It appears that this issue may be fixed in the just released version 5.10.13 for Windows (Version History). Or at least a temporary heavy-hammer solution implemented until a more graceful solution is done.
26) Message boards : BOINC client : Boinc On Vista - Projects Don't Suspend (Message 11708) Posted 19 Jul 2007 by Heflin Post: BUMP. There are others, like me, out there who are having the same issue (Boinc Service not suspending when user active under Vista) and are lurking for resolution. Work around of "Improved Windows Vista compatibility" by running all Boinc components as priviliged administrator makes me a bit nervous ... not for my PCs, but for other non-technical-folk's PCs who are remote from me and I've convinced to contribute CPU cycles when their PC is idle. Public beta version appears to be 5.10.13 w/improved Vista compatibility. But for remote machines, I really feel better staying away from Beta versions.
27) Message boards : BOINC Manager : 5.10.12 (both vista64bit and xp32bit) have defective manager on service install (Message 11707) Posted 19 Jul 2007 by Heflin Post: If an application bringing down OpenVMS wasn't reported as a major OS bug, jobs would have been axed. ... The admin was from a Unix background and thought computers did strange things like that as a matter of course. :-) Since we are so off topic ... this brings back some old memories ... A rather secure VMS cluster that was under utilized, while the Unx folks needed more resources. So they ran Unx as a privileged process on top of VMS. Kind of a neat feat : you could work in either the VMS environment or the Unx environment on the same data, and even at the same time. If you were in the VMS environment then security was still pretty well locked down and normal VMS reliable. If you were in the Unx environment then security and reliablity were normal for a Unx environment. However, there were so many security holes BETWEEN the environments that one could mess with VMS processes and resources with impunity from the Unx environment & vice versa Unx resources from VMS environment. Sure paid to be multi-lingual!! My work always finished before anybody elses got anywhere. And even my excessive play time, which they repeatedly tried to curtail and even eliminate, continued to cause single-lingual users to miss their deadlines and have both the VMS and Unx folks share in experiencing that ... "thought computers did strange things like that as a matter of course. :-)" Ahhh...good times! when work, play, and learning were all the same thing!!! Lesson Learned: If you can't do what needs to be done, change the rules...but don't tell anybody!
28) Message boards : Web interfaces : GridRepublic versus BOINCStats (BAM!) (Message 11249) Posted 26 Jun 2007 by Heflin Post: I've searched BOINC, SETI, and BAM! Forums (didn't find a GridRepublic forum) but don't see any head-to-head comparisons. Is there a comparison of these (or other) Account Managers somewhere? I like SIMPLE, non-intrusive, hands-free operation. Personally, I’m not concerned with stats, signatures, teams, etc. What I am concerned with is being able to monitor, manage, and reconfigure REMOTE machines that I don’t physically get to but once a year. Each owner of a machine may want different project, preferences, and configuration. I usually do not get more than one WU per project at a time since most of them have nearly continuous Internet access. Any suggestions? Comments? No Flame wars please.
29) Message boards : BOINC client : Boinc and Disc De-fragging question. (Message 11248) Posted 26 Jun 2007 by Heflin Post: I've NEVER stopped BOINC, nor previously SETI@home, when doing defrag or virus scans. Virus Scans are done every night. Defrags are done irregularly, but on average once per week on each machine. Defraging sortof helps to partially overwrite deleted files. I like to run it mostly for nostalgic reasons rather than any significant performance reasons. I've NEVER had an issue with BOINC and defrag or virus scan corrupting file.

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